Donkey Roll

Movie credits

Actor

Movie facts

Running time

MPAA rating

R for some graphic nudity, language throughout, sexual content and drug use

Year released

2016

Some movies enjoy a certain amount of post-viewing appreciation.
They settle in a little more fondly as thoughts revisit the
experience.

Not so with Popstar. In fact, it becomes more and more
disheartening. It’s a music satire/mockumentary-wannabe that fails
to match the sweet spot of the utterly listenable — and equally
utterly silly — music of This Is Spinal Tap or even Walk
Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

The heart sinks further as the background of the perps is
revealed.

For the uninitiated, The Lonely Island, performing within Popstar
as the Style Boyz, is a real pop satire trio (college friends Andy
Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer). They’ve made waves on
Saturday Night Live and they have a few albums to their
credit.

Their ability to attract top-shelf collaborators is impressive.
Guest artists include Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Michael Bolton,
Norah Jones and even Natalie Portman. But enjoying their music —
or their comedy; the two are muddled together — is a matter of
taste.

Not So Awesome!!!

The Lonely Island’s music has a following. I Just Had Sex
has been played 57,971,571 times (and counting) on Spotify. By
comparison, their seemingly ubiquitous anthem, Everything Is
AWESOME!!! (yeah, from The Lego Movie), has a mere
10,245,352 plays. Their viral video sensation from Saturday
Night Live, Dick in a Box, has been viewed nearly 3
million times across a couple different channels on YouTube.

J.T. might very well be the brightest spot in this big-screen
mess. He plays a timid, bespectacled chef while a lot of the other
luminaries make appearances in mock interview scenarios wherein
they discuss the monumental influence the Style Boyz played in
their lives.

The Lonely Island has a built-in fan base to call upon to attend
their big-screen antics. Unfortunately, there’s nothing
particularly fresh in this story of a boy band that reaches the
heights of popularity and implodes (with one member going off to
Big Timber, Colo., to start a pot plantation), followed by the
launch of a solo career for the lead singer, Conner (Samberg, Brooklyn
Nine-Nine on Fox), and his own stellar rise and fall.

Conner’s first solo album sold 4 million copies. Nowadays, in the
digital age of music streaming, that’s a decent number. But his
follow-up sells a paltry 65,000 copies in its first week of
release. The sophomore album is hampered by pathetic reviews —
given a 4/10 on Pitchfork and branded with a steaming poop emoji
in Rolling Stone. The bright spot? It gets a rave in The
Onion.

Poor Conner is too stupid to know that ain’t a good thing.

And that’s the problem. The characters are stupid. Not Zoolander
stupid (it takes smarts to be that stupid — seriously). This is
stupid stupid. Unsympathetic and mostly unfunny.

Mona Lisa

Popstar as a movie-going experience is at times
insufferable. It spends too much time focusing on the crass,
low-hanging fruit of “Explicit”-labeled lyrics instead of mining
the treasure trove of material to be found in today’s bubble-gum
pop, boy bands and, yes, that crass “explicit” element.

On occasion, there are some laughs. There’s a funny bit
lampooning the semi-salacious TMZ, but they go to that
well too often and for too long. Some of the cameo bits are funny,
particularly Mariah Carey (at this point more plastic than flesh
and blood) talking about how I’m So Humble resonates with
her.

Too often, though, the Style Boyz hits sound an awful lot like
the bombs found on Conner’s second solo album. They’re
indistinguishably bad, each one serving as the next song’s
benchmark for bad taste. For example, if a song about your
girlfriend wanting to get “it” like the U.S. did it to Osama Bin
Laden sounds like it’s up your alley, this movie might make your
day.

Instead of providing a quintessential digital-age update on the
classic Spinal Tap, the bulk of the movie’s jokes fall
flat. There’s a silly sponsorship by an appliance manufacturer
wherein Conner’s new album is pre-loaded on refrigerators and
other housewares. It creates a national power outage and all sorts
of privacy concerns are raised. (Surely this isn’t a dig at U2
offering free downloads of Songs of Innocence on Apple
devices. Come on now.)

The closest thing to a Spinal Tap moment is an epic
wardrobe malfunction that is stupid. Not smart stupid, like Derek
Zoolander, just stupid stupid.

The end game here is a so-so parody best suited for a lazy
Netflix night. Take it 5 minutes at a time, like an SNL
skit.